Preorder Shimmer Issue 16

This is the issue where we raised our pay rate for authors to three cents a word (with a comparable rate increase for artists). This tripled our pay rate (woo!). E. Catherine Tobler did a great job of selecting the stories for this issue, her second at the head of the fiction helm.

Would you like a taste of the stories? The issue closes with the story “In Light of Recent Events I Have Reconsidered The Wisdom of Your Space Elevator,” by Helena Bell. I’d read her strange and wonderful fiction before in Clarkesworld and other fine venues, so I was thrilled when this story came our way.

But I was even more delighted when Hel and her brother made this trailer for her story. Check it out!

Oh, this issue. “Ordinary Souls” by K. M. Szpara, “Tasting of the Sea,” by Shimmer veteran A.C. Wise, are quintessential Shimmery stories. They’re gorgeous stories of love and loss and yearning and the cost of magic. “The Sky Whale,” by Rebecca Emanuelson, a tale of a young girl’s incredible loss, made at least one staffer cry.

“Goodbye Mildred” by Charlie Bookout, and “Gemini in the House of Mars” by Nicole M. Taylor show a more wicked kind of love. “Goodby Mildred” has a delicously nostalgic tone, which it shares with “The Haunted Jalopy Races” by M. Bennardo.

“The Binding of Memories,” by Cate Gardner, is a curious confection of cake and revenge and memory. In “Word and Flesh,” by Dennis Y. Ginoza, the hero gets to eat all manner of treats, but to insidious intent. “Opposable Thumbs,” by Greg Leunig, also features sweets in a prominent role, but to very different results.

I have a real soft spot in my heart for “The Life and Death of Bob,” by William Jablonsky. Dying was the best thing that ever happened to Bob. It’s a feel-good life-affirming story — right up until the point when it isn’t, and then it just sort of makes you want to wash your hands of the human race. (Is it a spoiler to say a Shimmer story does not have a happy ending? I sure hope not.

Here’s another treat for you: the trailer for the issue, by E. Catherine Tobler.